


Calling

by oroborealis



Series: A Fire Worth Having [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Generous Use Of Metaphors, Hopeful Ending, Let Steve Rogers be Angry 2k18, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-01 10:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oroborealis/pseuds/oroborealis
Summary: When Sarah Rogers saw her baby boy for the first time, she prayed. She prayed for peace, for calm, and for a fire that unlike the men before him, was full of compassion and strength. An anger worth having. But mostly, she just prayed for patience.





	Calling

**Author's Note:**

> This work is tentatively part of a greater series that I hope to expand and root around in lmao. Thank you for bearing with my horrendous planning <3

 

        

       Fire burned in the Rogers men like they were born from it. It clawed up their throats like whiskey, burned their tongues, and stained their teeth with blood that was not theirs. That fire blackened hearts, broke ribs, reforged them into iron. It lept from them like a spirit, violent and blistering and uncaring. Scalding in the face of any weakness, daring that which threatened them like water. The forges in which they were shaped were full of rust and sharp corners. It was harsh and brittle, devoid of the peace lesser men found in simpler comforts. The Rogers men were made for war. Sarah always attributed it to the Irish blood in their veins; something that just couldn't be helped, you understand. So, when Sarah Rogers saw her baby boy for the first time, she prayed. She prayed for peace, for calm, and for a fire that unlike the men before him, was full of compassion and strength. An anger worth having. But mostly, she just prayed for patience.

 

        His mother was too sweet, too hopeful for her own good. Sarah worked day and night, fighting her own endless battle to keep a dying child from his inevitable fate. The Depression hit hard, and it was all she could do to keep them from the streets. Steve's battle was hard enough as it were. The threat of death came around every winter, every cold season, every time the flowers bloomed. She held him during these times, trying hard as she might to soothe the death rattle festering in her only boy, her precious son. He would tremble and cough and hack, like the devil himself was trying to get out. When Steve would come home, bruised and battered, and too damn thin, his pupils more black than blue, she wondered if the devil really was staging his escape. Despite it all, she still held on to her boy. It was only the two of them, after all. Never against the world, though. Steve's battle was against the world. Sarah's was always her son.

 

       Steve Rogers was 8 years old when he knew he was made for war. He was no stranger to hard battles. It came with his every breath, rattling through him like a swarm of wasps, burning and angry and neverfuckingending. It was a constant struggle to just live. Almost on the brink of death on a regular basis forced him to grow up too quickly. A constant tiredness always nipped at his heels like Hellhounds. There was never a fucking break. There was only a barely contained anger, always there and all-consuming. Like if he bit down hard enough it would come out of his teeth and poison whatever he touched. So, war called to him. Much like the old songs his mother would sing to him in Gaelic, pushing his hair from a too thin face, it pulled chords from his very soul. Unraveling him to bare components. It burned. When bullies came around, they always came around, he saw an outlet. He didn't care that the odds were stacked in his favor one hundred to one. He thought of his father's war medals, of the flag that sits in it's case, never opened, and he fought anyways.

 

        Steve was only 13 years old when the course of his anger was invariably changed. It came to him in the form of a companion, a best friend. James Buchanan Barnes came to Steve like rich soil. He was level, a foundation. Just as Bucky was light and mold-able, he could be compact and hard as stone. He could be the place of new beginnings, and much like the life that was capable of springing from that soil, he could grow. He was everywhere. In between Steve's toes, underneath his fingernails, in the folds of his clothes. Buck gave him something to be grateful for when the shakes stopped. The cool to quell the embers of rage always ready to rise in Steve's diaphragm. Steve still picked fights. He still lost more than he won. He still fucking rattled. But Bucky was there, and his mom was happier than he had ever seen her. His anger ebbed and flowed, lava in his fingers and toes, until it became too much and he fought again.

 

        Steve was 18 when his mother got sick. It was always supposed to be him that died from such a torturous withering experience. Sarah fought. Fought for her boy and for Bucky, who was just as much her son as Steve. Fought to be there. To be apart of a life that she could get used to. A peace she got a letter in the mail telling her in no uncertain terms that Joseph wasn't coming home. She loved them with her whole being, and wanted nothing more than to be there for her son. But in the end, it wasn't a battle she was supposed to win. She lost. Sarah was laid to rest next to her husband, the war hero. Too young, and too soon, and too much. After that, Steve’s pupils- baby blue his mom always said- were blackened on an almost regular basis. He threw himself into trouble with reckless abandon. He got his nose broken, twice, his shoulder dislocated, his skin mottled with bruises and cuts that he couldn’t always remember the origins of. He coughed and wheezed, and his heart wouldn’t stop beating so damn irregularly. And still, Bucky stayed. He cleaned his cuts, set his bones, got him the soup his mom used to make when the winter got into his lungs regardless of the fire that lived there.

 

        Steve was 23 when Bucky left for the war front. He hugged Bucky's neck like it was a promise. And looking back on it, he supposes it was. A promise of "I'll be safe" and "I'll come back to you, Stevie, I promise" and "I'll see you again". Steve hid his fear in the collar of his bestest friend's army uniform. He knew that he should try to be positive. Make Buck feel better about being shipped overseas to fight a battle against those that sought to harm the very structure of the life he wished he had. Steve wasn't scared for him, not in the traditional sense anyways. He was scared because he couldn't follow. It had been Steve and Bucky for the last decade, together when shit hit the fan, always. Now it was Bucky in enemy territory and Steve couldn't follow. It had been awhile since he felt the combination of rage and bitterness directed toward himself and his weaknesses. It crawled up his throat like a worm when Bucky turned and left.

 

        Steve didn't leave for a long time. He shook like he hadn't in years, unable to tell if it was because of anger or grief. Anger over his frail body, anger over the circumstances that brought him to this place of lonesomeness, that his mother was taken from him so soon, that he saw his father's war medals before he saw his actual face. Grief, because he will never see them again. Grief because he lost the last rock he had.

 

        And Steve was left afloat.

 

        It was only once he met Dr. Erskine, a man who saw not the frailty of an angry child, but the makings of a great man, that he felt as if his fire was a fire worth having. A fire that lit up the darkest parts of himself, that kept him warm instead of burning out the parts of his feeble mortality that made him beautifully human. Erskine looked past the wheezing breaths and too sharp collar bones. He told Steve that he, too, could be great. Not _despite_ his weaknesses, but _because_ of them. He promised Rebirth, a chance to be greater. To put aside that knowing emptiness of being left behind that was Steve’s greatest inheritance. The opportunity of becoming more than the promise of an early grave. And when he signed his name, shaky with relief and a worry that had worn itself out, Steve finally set his eyes on a future that he never thought he belonged to.

 

       

 

        


End file.
